Thank Sergio. You are welcome to come to Bali any time, but for someone who has an interest in teaching Mysore style practice, I strongly recommend developing your practice under Sharathji’s guidance. I’ll see you again here or there 😉

Thanks Marya. I’m glad you found it to be interesting!

That was super useful Iain, thank you very much for responding. Oh, one thing more…in case you find ( or decide to make it yourself ) green pea tempeh or chickpea tempeh, do give it a try 😀 You might find it’s taste more appealing than the regular, stinky soy one hehe. I’m a celiac and dairy protein enzyme deficient and with lots of reactivity ( kombucha is also a big no no no for me ) to most of the foods since birth. Karmic, genetic, or a combination of both and maybe something third 🙂 One thing is sure, minimizing stress factors and maximizing good quality, organic, plant based foods seems to keep my gut health and thus overall health, optimal. And L-glutamine deserves a respectful mention here along with aloe vera leaf.

It’s great to hear from you Tammy! I miss all of you as well and I am continuously inspired to know that you still practice together after so many years 🙂 Please pass on my greetings to Anna. I was practicing there on my most recent trip to Burlington in April and enjoyed her space very much.

I am visiting Ontario for the holiday season and was able to carve out some time to read your most recent post after a nice practice with Anna at Steeltown Yoga. It was a pleasure to read your inspiring words as I continue to deepen my practice of the primary series. The long trip across the country to be in Ontario to visit family over the holidays has definitely taken me out of my routine and I can feel it. I appreciated your thoughts on what has made your practice sustainable and healthy as you age and I look forward to hearing more about your thoughts on diet. It is important to me to have a life long yoga practice. Your continued guidance through your posts is helpful to me.

I miss you, think of you often and wish you all the best in 2020!

From cold, dark Canada,

Tammy

Hi Nidhi,
I’m glad to hear you enjoy the articles. Thanks for reading them.
When we practice the same sequence of postures and vinyasas every day, over a long period of time, the deeper layers of the structure of the body will shift and change in order to accommodate these movements into the permanent structural framework of the body and nervous system. At times we can feel like we are really “opening up” or becoming stronger, more stable, etc. This could be thought of as the first phase of structural change as we assimilate new movements into the structural repertoire of the body. As we continue to practice, those changes take root at a deeper level, and at times the body can elicit a healing response, which can include inflammation, tightness, tiredness etc, as the deeper elements of ourselves rearrange and reorganize in their relationship to one another. When this happens, we often lose the abilities to perform certain asanas or movements that we had when we felt more open. This is what I mean by the integration phase. The sense of “progress” in the practice is never linear, and any phase where we feel like we are making a lot of progress, will almost always be followed by a period where we feel like we are regressing. This can feel frustrating, but with long term practice, one comes to understand that this is part of the process, and if we patiently work through these integration phases, we come out the other side feeling open again, but this time in a way that is more permanent and stable.

Hi Jim. Thanks for your thoughtful comments and questions.

My current lifestyle had been gradually developed over the past 20 years. Step-by-step, I have arrived at where I am today. The changes were small and incremental, and time was taken to adapt to each stage. I didn’t start out with a “master plan” or ideal lifestyle that I wanted to emulate, I simply made changes as I felt they were necessary, to support the ongoing process of evolution in practice and teaching. I think making an abrupt shift from a “normal” lifestyle to something like the lifestyle that I live today would be too much of a shock to the entire system to be sustainable for anyone. So, I don’t recommend that anyone try to “copy” what I do, but if it provides “food for thought”, as you put it, and inspires natural lifestyle exploration, that is great.

My need for sleep is certainly less than it was 15 or 20 years ago, and less than the average person. I typically am in bed for 4 – 5 hours on days I am teaching. I also take a 30 minute long rest at the end of my practice, which ends up being something that I would classify as “Yoga Nidra”, and I usually have a 30 – 60 minute “Yoga Nidra B” in the late morning, after all my teaching work is finished. This rest is also taken in the traditional “Savasana” position, which I find provides a much deeper rest. I am in a deeply embodied and focused state when I take these two “naps”, which also brings more restfulness than normal sleep. This sleep schedule gives me plenty of rest to do what I want to do with my life. I can even miss the second yoga nidra from time to time if necessary. Once a week, I like to get a longer sleep of 7 – 9 hours, on the night before the day I don’t teach. I find that being mildly “sleep deprived” puts one into a bit of an edgier state, which can be worked to one’s advantage, if one is able to work with the sensations and feelings non-reactively. I find it brings a sharpness which can be more useful than the dullness and lethargy that comes from oversleeping.

It isn’t possible to pinpoint one aspect of practice which brings about the need for less sleep. It is a synergistic effect of all the elements of practice and diet together. One key theme would be equanimity or non-reactivity. I have devoted a lot of time and energy to cultivating this quality through my Buddhist practices, and “Sampajanna” is the thread that links all of my practices together. Reactivity is the biggest energy drain of all, and training oneself to let go of reactive patterns is the biggest aid to increased energy, in my experience. So, asana, pranayama, meditation, diet, all linked together by the thread of Sampajanna is the main element leading to decreased need for sleep.

Regarding whether getting up shortly after midnight and practicing at 2 am is “unnatural”….I would say it depends on how one defines “natural”. For me, natural means wild, and the human species has been a domesticated species for tens of thousands of years. Domestication is the opposite of wild, and hence to me, the opposite of “natural”. The degree of domestication has increased as civilization has developed, and so I don’t think there is anything about the human species that can be considered “natural” in the sense of being wild and instinctual. We are highly conditioned by the culture and society we are born into. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as cultural influence is a part of human nature. But, I think this fact makes it very difficult to say what a natural sleeping pattern (or diet, etc) is, or should be, for a human being.

We are certainly diurnal, not nocturnal, so I think that getting one’s main sleep in the dark period of the 24 hour cycle is natural. I do this, as I go to bed shortly after sunset (in most parts of the globe…..). The only difference is that I don’t sleep the entire night. I have read some interesting theories which suggest that it is more “natural” for humans to sleep in shifts, rather than one big chunk of 7 – 9 hours. These theories suggest that this is what our ancestors did, up to the time just before the industrial revolution. This makes sense to me, as it is the sleeping cycle I have adapted to. It is a challenge because it goes against what most other humans around me are doing, but does feel natural in a way that it is sustainable and feels healthy when I disregard the influence of other humans around me.

One thing that is clear is that human beings are highly adaptable. We can adapt to many different kinds of lifestyle conditions, and if one is sensitive and exploratory, one can learn how to thrive within a varied range of lifestyles and environments. Would I get up that early if I didn’t have to teach at 6:30 am? No, I wouldn’t. I would say the *ideal* time to begin practice would be 4 or 5 am.